London bombings - the blogger response

Our newsblog account of events as they happened can be found here, and the latest articles and updates can be found on our front page.

As the scale of the events in London unfolded, bloggers in London and elsewhere began to respond though their sites. From initial feelings of shock and surprise, the web began to swell with a mixture of relief - for those who escaped unharmed - as well as anger and defiance.

Many bloggers in the capital simply logged in to say "I'm all right", to send messages to friends, family and readers that they were safe. As the day wore on however, accounts appeared from people who had experienced the attacks first hand. One particularly powerful one came from Justin on pfff.co.uk, simply titled "Surviving a Terrorist Attack".

The train left the tracks and started to rumble down the tunnel. It was incapable of stopping and just rolled on. A series of explosions followed as if tube electric motor after motor was exploding. Each explosion shook the train in the air and seems to make it land at a lower point.

I fell to the ground like most people, scrunched up in a ball in minimize injury. At this point I wondered if the train would ever stop, I thought "please make it stop", but it kept going. In the end I just wished that it didn't hit something and crush. It didn't.

When the train came to a standstill people were screaming, but mainly due to panic as the carriage was rapidly filling with smoke and the smell of burning motors was giving clear clues of fire.

David Plotz, of online magazine Slate, was in London watching the reaction to the successful Olympic bid. Within 24 hours he was watching the reaction to a terrorist strike:

"The reaction to today's attacks feels incredibly English. When I left the quiet area right around the bus bombing and returned to the busy streets of Holborn and Soho, London appeared just as it always is," he wrote. "The natural state of the English is a kind of gloomy diligence, which is why they do so well in hard times ... I was in Washington for 9/11, and the whole city went into a panic ... But in London today, everyone still has a cell phone clutched to their ear. The delivery vans are still racing about, seeking shortcuts around all the street closures. The Starbucks is packed."

More and more, bloggers started to speak of the damage inflicted on "their London", with a sense of disbelief, anger and confusion. Many supported the speech given by Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, speaking from Singapore - transcribed in full by Gert on Mad Musings of Me.

People arrived home, and began to post moving and evocative accounts of a day that started normal and became more confused and frightening as the hours went on. Hg of Hydragenic describes the day in a series of "disconnected thoughts". On Acerbia, D writes about muffled explosions, troubled journeys and rumours, while Greenfairy describes the experience of thousands of others, trapped in a transportless London, with patchy phone reception and a long walk home:

As we inch along damp streets two women next to me wonder why the underground isn't protected against power surges, and devise several unique tortures for Ken Livingstone before they alight a few stops later. I'm staring out of the window when my message recieves a reply, and I read the word 'bomb' for the first time.

The police arrive with tape and dogs and noise at the same time as the message. All traffic is halted and we're scooped from the bus and shooed down the road, waved on by a thick line of yellow-jacketed men. Nobody looks at anybody else. Nobody cries out. Nobody shows fear. I try to call my friends but the networks are jammed.

Then, as the day wore on, posts of defiance started to sound loudly around the blogosphere. Tim Worstall who, like Andrew Sullivan, Europhobia's Nosemonkey and Robin at perfect.co.uk did an incredible job of summing up the best resources the web could offer, gave voice to a clearly felt London mood, in his paean to the indefatigable British spririt, which has already been picked up and quoted in so many blogs:

Many years ago I was working in The City and there were two events that made travel into work almost impossible.

The first was a series of storms that brought down power lines, blocked train routes and so on. Not surprisingly, the place was empty the next day. Why bother to struggle through?

The other event was an IRA bomb which caused massive damage and loss of life. Trains were disrupted, travel to work the next day was horribly difficult and yet there were more people at work than on a normal day. There was no co-ordination to this, no instructions went out, but it appeared that people were crawling off their sick beds in order to be there at work the next day, thrusting their mewling and pewling infants into the arms of anyone at all so that they could be there.

Yes, we'll take an excuse for a day off, throw a sickie. But you threaten us, try to kill us? Kill and injure some of us?

Fuck you, sunshine.

We'll not be having that.

No grand demonstrations, few warlike chants, a desire for revenge, of course, but the reaction of the average man and woman in the street? Yes, you've tried it now bugger off. We're not scared, no, you won't change us. Even if we are scared, you can still bugger off."

The last word at this point to Nosebag, who had this to say on the subject of aid donations at 7.16pm;

Just had an email request for details of how to give charity donations to help the victims. Nothing that I've heard of so far. I'd say give it to Oxfam or Make Poverty History - Londoners are fairly well-off. Bunk it to people who matter - the African buggers who were meant to be getting helped out at G8 today. The terrorist bastards have screwed them over more than they have us.